1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to radio receivers and in particular, to a system and method for frequency offset estimation.
2. Description of Related Art
The process for radio frequency transmission and reception is well known to those skilled in the art. Basically, at a transmitter, a carrier frequency is generated by a local oscillator and is modulated by a baseband signal. More specifically, two sinusoidal carriers of the same frequency, but having a ninety-degree phase offset, are modulated by the real (I) and imaginary (Q) parts of a complex valued baseband signal. At the receiver, coherent demodulation requires exactly the same carrier frequency and phase. In some radio communication systems, however, a frequency offset error appears in the demodulated baseband signal for one reason, or a combination of several reasons. For example, the local oscillator frequency used in the receiver generally may not exactly match the frequency used by the local oscillator transmitter. Also, if the transmitter or receiver is mobile, the received signal may be affected by a Doppler spread.
When the demodulating frequency generated by the local oscillator at the receiver is not precisely equal to the received frequency of the transmitted signal, the demodulated in-phase and quadrature components (I′ and Q′) of the baseband signal differ from the transmitted components (I and Q) by a variable phase offset. This results in a steady rotation of the whole I-Q constellation diagram which can adversely impact the accuracy of baseband signal reception and detection. In many mobile communication systems, a predefined word (often referred to as a pilot) signal provides a reference that can be used for frequency offset measurement. Once the offset is measured, the local oscillator at the receiver can be tuned to correct for that offset.